Description

In what will be his 2nd performance in the UK since 2020, we are please to have Wreckless Eric perform at St Mark?s Church, Southend On Sea, as part of the Estuary Fringe Festival.

He needs little introduction ? he wrote and recorded the classic Whole Wide World and had a hit with it back in 1977. Since then it's been a hit for countless other artists including The Monkees, Cage The Elephant and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, featured in the 2022 Expedia / Superbowl / Ewan MacGregor travel ad, and most recently in the podcast Smartless.

As Eric Goulden it's a little more complicated - a musician, artist, writer, recording engineer and producer, he didn?t like either the music business, the mechanics of fame or the name he?d been given to hide behind, so he crawled out of the spotlight and disappeared into the underground. He went on to release twenty something albums in forty something years under various names - The Len Bright Combo, Le Beat Group Electrique, The Donovan Of Trash, The Hitsville House Band, and with his wife as one half of Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, finally realizing he was stuck with the name Wreckless Eric.
?
Eric?s three most recent albums ?amERICa?, Construction Time & Demolition and Transience are widely praised as his best work to date. His albums encapsulate pop, bubblegum, garage trash and psychedelia. His live performance is a sonic journey through time and space incorporating songs from all stages of his long career. Unmasked, unhinged and still alive - a survivor of Covid-19 (resulting in a near-fatal heart attack), Eric presents himself alone if not simply with electric and acoustic guitars, and electronics of his own making.

?The achievement for Wreckless Eric is to have made new music that connects to old music without maudlin nostalgia or huffy defensiveness, refusing to let age dim the passion for the music that means the most to him. In other words, he rocks.?
Ken Tucker
FRESH AIR / NPR

?After the set, Reigning Sound?s Greg Cartwright, shaking his head, expressed his utter admiration for Goulden?s craft as both a songwriter and storyteller, and the minimalism with which he enacts it. ?
MEMPHIS FLYER
?
?A scarily powerful and forward-moving musical threat.?
David Quantick
MOJO MAGAZINE


+ support, Phil Burdett

Phil Burdett is a 62 year old singer songwriter who has been making music for over 40 years.

Burdett has soldiered on through subsequent changes in styles & personnel, making nine further albums of songs drawn from a myriad of experiences & influences with many of Essex's top musicians.

Description

Hamlet Road,

Southend-on-Sea,

Essex,

England,

SS1 1HY.